Amazon's entry into the growing tablet sector has been one
of the worst
kept secrets in the tablet industry. Amazon has already stormed the
e-reader market with its line of Kindle
devices, so delivering the company's expansive multimedia platform to a
more versatile platform seemed like a given.

To reach that price point, the Kindle Fire forgoes 3G
access, a microphone, and the usual bevy of cameras that come on
today's tablets. However, the Kindle Fire does include Wi-Fi (802.11n) and a free 30-day
trial of Amazon Prime (an Amazon Prime membership normally runs $79/year).

The Kindle Fire weighs 14.6 ounces and features a dual-core processor. Amazon says that the Kindle Fire provides up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback (Wi-Fi disabled). The devices fully recharges within 4 hours via its USB 2.0 port.

While the Kindle Fire has 8GB of internal storage, apps from the Amazon Appstore, music, magazines, and Kindle Books will all be stored on Amazon's Cloud Drive service which makes having a large amount of onboard storage unnecessary.

"Kindle Fire brings together all of the things we've been working on at Amazon for over 15 years into a single, fully-integrated service for customers," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. "With Kindle Fire, you have instant access to all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, the convenience of Amazon Whispersync, our revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser, the speed and power of a state-of-the-art dual-core processor, a vibrant touch display with 16 million colors in high resolution, and a light 14.6 ounce design that's easy to hold with one hand - all for only $199. We're offering premium products, and we're doing it at non-premium prices."

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Yes Ozzie and Kevin Turner have both said that the days of buying a pack of licenses then maybe or maybe not using them are over. They realize things are moving to a pay for what you use model and that churn can be instant.

We are moving to a world where pay-as-you-go will be the norm. Ecosystem jumping will become harder for a while then become easier. In the meantime competition will get more fierce than it ever has.

As for required connection: That doesn't seem to be the direction Microsoft is going. They know that choice is a prime feature of their ecosystem. Look at the On, Off, and Hybrid cloud/premisis solutions they have in O365, BPOS, Azure, and Windows Live.